Cutting through the noise - promo/record labels/indie...

[goroth]

Yo!

tl;dr
Anyone got any tips (dos don'ts) for approaching a record label or getting your shit out there better?

Background
I'm going back and forth on the independent/label thing. I thought Gigafauna's last release was pretty decent (as do all bands I suppose), and our press kit and promo plan was solid. We ended up getting maybe 10 reviews for the album, but I sent it out to maybe 70-80 outlets, that were all relevant for our sort of music. I'm fairly certain I did the right stuff (it was 10-12 weeks in advance of the release date, gave them the option to stream or DL uncompressed files, short band bio, long band bio etc etc etc). It was just hard to even get any response at all, even after following up etc.

So I'm starting to think about how to do things better for our next release, which we are writing.

One idea is working with a promoter of some description, but another is trying to get on a label. What got me thinking about labels is their value as a first filter, as a proxy for quality. Given the difficulty we had getting reviews and getting the word out I started to think that maybe labels aren't such a bad idea, just to cut through the noise and sheer quantity of new music out there.

NB: I'm under no illusions as to what the sort of label we could get on could do for a band on Gigafauna's level. I'm not expecting a rain of cash to finance a Mötley Crüe lifestyle. I just want to get my music out there, and I'm not sure how to improve on the approach I had with the last album.

Any thoughts from the fuzz hive mind?

[Dowi]

Got some spare lunch-time to answer properly. This is my experience, hope it’s somehow helpful.

With our first release (2011) we did nothing except playing gigs and sending out a couple hundreds of emails to ‘zines etc trying to get some reviews. Result: got some reviews from blogs, a good amount of streams on our bandcamp page and some likes on our facebook page. We’re talking about almost 10 years ago, obviously the whole magazine/webzine/blog/social media panorama has changed consistently since then.

With the second one (in 2015) we paired with a promotion agency with the intent of getting more reviews and get more known before our first European tour. Got a handful of reviews on printed magazines and another handful of reviews from webzines. Besides that, nothing worth noticing. Probably (almost surely) the promoting agency was not the right one.

I was 100% focused on sending 500+ emails to venues and promoters for the tour and didn’t have time to do the promotion thing too. I realized that it would have been better if I took care of the promotion thing too like the first time.

Yes, printed press and “big” webzines 99% of the time don’t even consider your release if it’s not presented through an agency of sort -they have their deals and don’t have time to check all the thousands of bands filling their inbox - BUT small blogs and dedicated ‘zines have often loyal readers that are more willing to check out an unknown band if presented by their blog of choice, comparing to the thousands of mini-reviews that appear on bigger names. I’m not saying the latter ones are not useful because obviously they have a larger audience, and seeing your name on those ones is obviously satisfying for you as a musician and for your fans/followers/whatever, but at the time my impression was “fuck, next time I’m gonna take care of it again”.

The third release (in 2017) was our first proper LP, and by that time we played a lot more and knew more people, so we decided to try a multi-label co-production thing.

Here’s what I did: I took note of the labels that were putting out artists/bands/music similar to ours and wrote a hundred-ish emails to see if someone was interested in our stuff. I did this as soon as we ended the first part of the mixing sessions of the album, sending a small band presentation along with a rough mix of the album and, most importantly, mentioning why I was writing to them. It’s not something to be underestimated: except for the presentation part, these were not anonymous copy/paste emails, but were targeted to that label for a reason, because they worked with this band, or because of their approach, etc, so I wanted them to know it.

The aim was to find some labels/distros willing to help us print the CDs and LPs giving some money in advance and then getting the records at cost-price as soon as they were ready, then, if their copies sold out, they could have more always at the same price.

It worked out quite well, as we got our stuff being distributed in different areas/nations, but always through the DIY/small label approach, with each label’s trusty audience etc etc. I don’t mean that we don’t have some boxes of unsold LPs in our basement, it was surely a huge helping hand as the costs for vinyl pressings were high, and at least we got our invested money back, which is something, plus 2 labels asked us for more because their first batch of 15 or 20 LPs sell out in three or four months, and I can’t hide that from a band point of view it’s an extremely satisfying thing to hear.

I have to say that communication with all the 10 labels, setting a shared release date, distributing all the stuff etc wasn’t easy, but luckily one of their was more experienced in this kind of process and helped a lot with the coordination aspect.

Regarding the promotion part, I sent out another bunch of requests and got some blog reviews - actually few compared to the first album, but in the 7-years leap a lot of those DIY blogs were abandoned or focused social media and changed their approach (or our music got worse, which is not a thing to exclude) – BUT another upside of the co-production is that some of the labels had their own contacts to promote their releases, so we got some really nice write-ups from specialized zines without actually working with a dedicated promotion agency (i.e. one of the labels helped us out with this aspect taking care of two pre-release previews/articles on idioteq and new noise mag).

One year after the release I noted this considerations for my future-self:

- Limit the labels to 5 or 6 to ease the whole process.
- People say CDs are dead but if you play live you know CDs sell easier because they are cheaper. CDs are cool.
- DO NOT print so many vinyl unless you want to use them as pizza dishes (actually at the time there was a “minimum copies” thing that forced us)

Uh, i almost forgot: we invested a very small amount of money in social-media promotion too. I'm talking about less than 50€, not to be on everyone's feed for 1 month, but just to be sure that some of our social output at least appeared in the feed of our followers. I tried for a while to make our band "social-present" with regular posts, hashtags etc, but i hated it more than sending 600 emails, decided it was too time-consuming and, for a low-level band like us, there was no point in doing it. I'm pretty sure that right now the whole social thing has evolved dramatically so if you plan to promote your stuff you should probably have a strategy in that too.

That’s it, i'm willing to hear more experiences and to talk about the whole promotion/distribution thing because it's an aspect that always annoys me but at the same time is much needed if you want some kind of practical results (except the "artistic" part).




(first time I write this much since I wrote my thesis in uni )

[Olin]

Very relevant post, I'm currently doing the same thing as you Goroth, with the same goals and expectations i think (and absolutely hating it lol, makes you feel real small to be rejected/ignored this often). Really cool advice Dowi, I'm reading intently and taking notes, thanks so much for writing it all out.

How do you go about finding blogs and zines effectively? I feel I'm pretty out of touch with music these days and don't really know what's going on anymore so I'm not as sure where to go looking for stuff.

[HorsSujet]

And I think everyone can thank you for writting down so much Dowi.
Very important experience shared here !

[goroth]

Yeah, holy shit Dowi!

Amazing.

Honestly, we don't even have a big enough fan base to start thinking about physical products. I try and do the social media thing, but I'm shit at it, and it's soul destroying. In fact, all of the promo stuff, networking, making videos, press releases, photo shoots.... all of that stuff just makes me hate music. Even though I can understand the creative aspect of it. I'm not 18 anymore, and I can't sit 9 hours a day in front of a computer emailing dudes and ringing round and shit. And I don't know if I'd be any good at it if I tried anyway. I guess I'm a typical old school musician who thinks their whole thing is to make music, in a very narrow definition.

The scene is so fucking dead in Sweden, at least for underground metal. So when covid blows over the goal is to take some time off and do a tour of Germany/Netherlands. Which I think would help our exposure and get us some more listeners, and maybe get some more reviews. But we can't go on a tour if we don't have enough listeners to begin with. SO I feel like Bill and Ted arguing about needing a triumphant video to get eddie van halen, but needing eddie van halen to make a triumphant video.

I dunno... I was a bit disheartened that even sites dedicated to underground metal weren't receptive in the slightest. I get that Decibel is not interested in us, so I didn't bother wasting my time on them, but fuck, when some progressive metal blog written in html 2 on notepad and optimised for Netscape Navigator doesn't even get back to you...

Maybe it'll go better next time, with the bit of coverage we got this time. We're definitely getting better search results now if you google the band. But maybe I should bite the bullet and get someone who has contacts and knows how to do promo. Or maybe that's what a label is for these days...
UNGH.

Much wondering. Very confuse.

PS: Am listening to Mastodon right now (where I am a strong believer that they peaked at Remission and Leviathan and everything else has been progressively worse)... and I'm going to admit that I fucking love The Motherload. That chorus is rad as shit.

[Heraclitus Akimbo]

I dunno... I was a bit disheartened that even sites dedicated to underground metal weren't receptive in the slightest. I get that Decibel is not interested in us, so I didn't bother wasting my time on them, but fuck, when some progressive metal blog written in html 2 on notepad and optimised for Netscape Navigator doesn't even get back to you...

Coming at this from the other side, don't underestimate how much spam + useless promo even the humblest blog gets, so unless they know you in person or by band name or something similar it's easy to get lost in the shuffle/ be moved along by an aggressive spam filter.

My blog is pretty niche — I basically only post field recordings I make of local bands (and even niche-ier in that most of that is free improvisation) but at some point I got hoovered into a "blog directory" and the tsunami of spam is endless. Which means I have endless junk to try and clear out, and then you also have to keep an eye out for the stuff you want not slipping through. I've missed stuff from peeps/bands/labels I dig just 'cause it was swept under.

And then, beyond that, even in the narrowest of musical zones there's so much out there that you can get overwhelmed in digging deep into the pool of stuff out there... so one more submission, even one that might press all your buttons, is easy to not get to.

As an aside, sample of actual spam from yesterday:

[Dowi]

And I think everyone can thank you for writting down so much Dowi.
Very important experience shared here !

How do you go about finding blogs and zines effectively? I feel I'm pretty out of touch with music these days and don't really know what's going on anymore so I'm not as sure where to go looking for stuff.

Happy to hear this is useful to someone.
Honestly i'm quite out of the 'zines loop now, i used to be a lot more active years ago on blogspot etc, and i had a lot more time to spend looking for the newest unknown psych-prog-sludge-zeuhl act from the other side of the world

I try and do the social media thing, but I'm shit at it, and it's soul destroying. In fact, all of the promo stuff, networking, making videos, press releases, photo shoots.... all of that stuff just makes me hate music. Even though I can understand the creative aspect of it. I'm not 18 anymore, and I can't sit 9 hours a day in front of a computer emailing dudes and ringing round and shit. And I don't know if I'd be any good at it if I tried anyway. I guess I'm a typical old school musician who thinks their whole thing is to make music, in a very narrow definition.

Hey, i totally relate to this statement. That's why i was pointing out that i did all of these things until 2017/2018. It was my "last" effort, and i kinda knew it as life was already becoming different from when i was 20, work, kids, stuff, priorities change. I always hated every second of all the promotional part of this but i felt i needed to do it if i wanted some results, and i had the time to do it. If i were to record a new album now (and i hope to make it sooner or later), i won't have the willingness to do it again. If i ever had the time i'd rather spend it looking for gigs - which leads me to:

The scene is so fucking dead in Sweden, at least for underground metal. So when covid blows over the goal is to take some time off and do a tour of Germany/Netherlands. Which I think would help our exposure and get us some more listeners, and maybe get some more reviews. But we can't go on a tour if we don't have enough listeners to begin with. SO I feel like Bill and Ted arguing about needing a triumphant video to get eddie van halen, but needing eddie van halen to make a triumphant video.

This is not entirely true. Or better, yes, and a bit of social-posting when organizing a tour and having listeners around surely helps, but - speaking on an ideal covid-free world - even if your band reaches a minimum amount of streams and social-media likes or whatever, how many of this people you think are going to show up to a gig on a wednesday night in the middle of a foreign country?
I am not saying this because of your band (which i like btw), or my band, or a specific genre.. this is true to any band that doesn't have some kind of exposure.
So my best choice has always been: plan a tour.
Find out where similar bands have played, don't write to the venue, find the promoter that organized their gig and write them. If they book you they will promote the show because it's their passion and their interest, and they probably have asome people that regularly show up to their shows because they are used to do it, and they will probably add some local bands to gather more people.
Maybe on that wednesday night you will have 10people at your gig instead of the sound guy alone, and maybe the next time you will have more. Obviously this won't happen every night, and some nights are gonna be terrible, but when you get to the one well organized/promoted show, there's gonna be people here, and the satisfaction in going to cancel the previous nights, and you will keep going. Eventually you're gonna have an entire week of shows with a small amount of adience, you're gonna sell some merch, and more people are going to know your music and so on.

I dunno... I was a bit disheartened that even sites dedicated to underground metal weren't receptive in the slightest. I get that Decibel is not interested in us, so I didn't bother wasting my time on them, but fuck, when some progressive metal blog written in html 2 on notepad and optimised for Netscape Navigator doesn't even get back to you...

Coming at this from the other side, don't underestimate how much spam + useless promo even the humblest blog gets, so unless they know you in person or by band name or something similar it's easy to get lost in the shuffle/ be moved along by an aggressive spam filter.

My blog is pretty niche — I basically only post field recordings I make of local bands (and even niche-ier in that most of that is free improvisation) but at some point I got hoovered into a "blog directory" and the tsunami of spam is endless. Which means I have endless junk to try and clear out, and then you also have to keep an eye out for the stuff you want not slipping through. I've missed stuff from peeps/bands/labels I dig just 'cause it was swept under.

That's an interesting insight, thanks Herac. I have never been on the other side of the fence so i only know some parts of it.


@goroth i am ready to discuss about when Mastodon peaked or why they are one of the best bands around, even if i can't listen to an entire album of theirs after CTS


Side note 1: I peronally remember a gig in Birmingham on a wednesday night as one of the best i ever played - aww the memories.

Side Note 2: we should start a dedicated thread for "worst gigs/venues you played", i bet a lot of people have some awful stories to be told..

[D.o.S.]

I dunno... I was a bit disheartened that even sites dedicated to underground metal weren't receptive in the slightest. I get that Decibel is not interested in us, so I didn't bother wasting my time on them, but fuck, when some progressive metal blog written in html 2 on notepad and optimised for Netscape Navigator doesn't even get back to you...

Coming at this from the other side, don't underestimate how much spam + useless promo even the humblest blog gets, so unless they know you in person or by band name or something similar it's easy to get lost in the shuffle/ be moved along by an aggressive spam filter.

As a fellow former blog being, this is key. And pretty much the only concrete advantage to working with a PR firm of some type. The process of weeding out (hey hey Greg Ginn don't sue me) is mostly "Do I have time to listen to this?" and the answer is nearly always "not really", so having some kind of seal of approval:


Goes a long way toward getting your shit heard.

[retinal orbita]

Honestly, we don't even have a big enough fan base to start thinking about physical products. I try and do the social media thing, but I'm shit at it, and it's soul destroying.

If I may weigh in here (with my opinion only and please take with a grain of salt) - I think underestimating the appeal of a physical product is something that will hurt your band in the long run. I say this as someone who (has, not currently) played in numerous bands and is an avid collector of physical media. I don't really stream (my wife has a spotify I use while cooking dinner once in a while). I don't buy digital files on bandcamp. I buy tapes and LPs from bands. I will buy a CD if that's the only option. I will not remember you if you're some Spotify shuffle band (not YOU - I like you!! We're IG buds - I mean in general). I will probably be more likely to check out your band if my IG buddy posts a copy of your tape in their feed. I can't tell you WHY - actually I can - putting out a demo or an album and hyping it up is reminiscent of the ancient demo ways of sorcery. I mean tapes are cheap as fuck these days to get out there. I just don't buy the appeal of a digital file and for some you may just get lost in the shuffle. I am not suggesting you self finance an LP, vinyl is outrageously expensive and I would wager that a lot of bands overestimate their fans willingness to drop $30 plus shipping (if you can't get it on amazon) for their LP. Like whoa nelly man I have too many friggin' musical interests at the moment to even consider that. You play a show and some drunk Swede throws down 90 Krona for your tape, they will remember that more than the Spotify play. It adds that "next level" to a band that says "don't forget the struggle, don't forget the streets".

I will say this as one example - I briefly played in a band years ago - like 9-10 years ago - not naming names here but they have stuck to the local band circuit and their bandcamp and have seemingly zero interest in doing anything more, and wonder why they are still playing to the same people they did a decade ago and received ZERO hype beyond that. They're a good band! But they got lost in that digital shuffle.

And on the social media tip - nothing worse than a band who has paid a shit load of money to massacre my instagram feed. Currently it's Underoath (Underdeath? Under something, whatever (it's not Undergang, they fuckin' slap) they're from fucking Rochester and do the "death metal stance" as generic as I assume their riffs are) that I see on every third fucking post I scroll through. I get it - y'all want to play MDF next year..... let the riffs shine and the social media algorithm die......

[coldbrightsunlight]

that's an interesting point about physical media retinal. I have had this debate with my band members, and I am the rare person who has gone entirely digital and loves buying albums on bandcamp. If I go to a gig and like your band I'll bookmark the page on my phone and buy the album on bandcamp the next day. Or I buy a t-shirt/poster if you have good merch. But I never buy physical CDs/records/tapes. I used to but that stuff annoys me now. I'm just very committed to checking out new stuff and digital is the best way for me to do this.

But I think in having these conversations within bands I proooobably underestimate how niche that sort of consumption habit is.

[retinal orbita]

But I think in having these conversations within bands I proooobably underestimate how niche that sort of consumption habit is.

I won’t claim to have all the answers or speak for the metal community at large - just my hot take! I mean look at how crazy people go for the “no fee bandcamp fridays” that tbqh are baffling to me - I mean I get it saves the artist the fees but they seem insanely popular!! I just know that I’m always “more” intrigued by a band when I can pick up a demo or some shit.

[Heraclitus Akimbo]

I'm totally on both sides of this divide. Given that I'd been buying most of my physical media at gigs the past few years, in this gigless year I've gotten nothing, and I've been just fine with Bandcamping it.

On the other hand, I do like having a physical, tangible thing. Even if it's not a tape/record/CD. I think I said here before, a couple years ago for an album release I had a few tapes, but I also did some printed photographs with bandcamp codes, and that seemed like a nice midway point. They're light + easy to carry around, and people get something they can put on their fridge instead of on their shelf.

[coldbrightsunlight]

But I think in having these conversations within bands I proooobably underestimate how niche that sort of consumption habit is.

I won’t claim to have all the answers or speak for the metal community at large - just my hot take! I mean look at how crazy people go for the “no fee bandcamp fridays” that tbqh are baffling to me - I mean I get it saves the artist the fees but they seem insanely popular!! I just know that I’m always “more” intrigued by a band when I can pick up a demo or some shit.

I've been going for this and I just pay for the digital album. Hahaha

Yeah HA I think I remember a thread on that a couple of years ago. Physical merch that isn't records or t-shirts could still be a fun thing to make and give people something to latch onto that's tangible

[VREEEEVROOOOOW]

Such an interesting thread. I'm shit at "making it", so I'm mostly here to say thanks to goroth & dowi for super interesting perspectives!

With fear of sounding bitter, I've mostly given up. I set up several shows and spent lots of time emailing people, friends, venues, press, other bands, labels, and so on. The end result is usually the same. A few friends show up, maybe one or two, but often zere, other people. So I spend so much energy, and nobody shows up, and nobody talks to me after the show, and it's just whatever. I enjoy *playing* the show a lot, and I enjoy making posters. But the rest of it, I've now concluded, is merely draining. I've talked to a lot of bands who are all "hey! cool! yeah we wanna play with you! can you send us an mp3 of what you sound like?", and then I do, and then they stop replying. Venues too. And, personally, I don't think we're *that* weird, so I don't know what's up with that. I guess people just don't care, because we're just Yet Another Band. And I'm just so tired of putting in the effort.

I think we should probably focus our energy at recording an actual album. That might make people care more. Hence my interest in this thread. But, then again, I'm just really tired of "promotion" and all that crap, so I'll just fail miserably at promoting the album too.

I'm also putting out solo stuff very soon. And that's, to connect to what retinal was saying, on cassette. And I'm doing two editions, actually. One with hand-painted covers, and one that's a split cassette, with two entire albums (mine and one other's). I have one label involved in putting the album digitally, and one that's putting it out on cassette, so I don't have to do so much work. But........... it's a noise album, so nobody will care at all anyway, haha.

Moral of the story: failing without trying is actually a lot more attractive to me than failing and trying!

[D.o.S.]

Eh you'd be surprised. There's some cool noise gigs out there (or were before the pandemic hit). You just gotta be willing to travel and your trappings have to be mega on point.